A telephone network must provide restoration of traffic accessing the network at a node which has failed. A node may for example be a lightwave system terminating point of links on a telephone transmission network. U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,744, discloses a system for restoring traffic. However, this and other prior systems have limitations in the degree to which they restore traffic which accesses the networks at failed nodes, and in the manner they optimize the costs involved in obtaining various levels, such as percentages, of restoration within any given time.